Today, Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company MediaTek, announced they have been selected by Garmin to supply their newest GPS chipset – the MT3329. This new chipset supposedly offers the least power consumption of competitive solutions, the fastest acquisition enabling rapid time-to-first-fix (TTFF) and superior navigation performance in slow moving situations- ideal for handheld devices.
Garmin have designed this single chip solution into their GPSMAP 60 series but I wonder if they will also use MediaTek in their Nuvifone, now set for release Q3. Asus is already a longtime customer of MediaTek and the Nuvifone is being developed by Garmin-Asus. This would help them compete head to head with Apple andtheir release of the iPhone 3.0 OS (release in July) enabling turn by turn navigation.
Was it smart for Garmin to try and build a phone around their navigation product(not an easy task as seen by the continuous delay. Did they not learn a lesson from Microsoft and Google?) or should they have gone the TomTom route and partner up with Apple through an iPhone application?